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A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF 
THE EDUCATIONAL 
PUBLISHING BUSINESS 
IN THE UNITED STATES 

by 
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WEfPULSIFER 



ATLANTIC CITY. N. J. 
MARCH 2, 1921 






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A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE EDUCATIONAL 



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PUBLISHING BUSINESS IN THE 
UNITED STATES 

"The history of a nation," one dictionary says, "is a systematic record 
of past events ; especially the record of events in which man has taken part." 

The history of the educational publishing business in America is 
likewise a systematic record of past events in which man has taken part. 
The events of this history include the beginning, the development, and the 
wonderful improvement in books and book-making since 1691, and the 
men and women who have taken part in these events are authors and 
publishers. 

Starr King, the eloquent preacher and orator whose powerful argu- 
ments in 1860 and '61 aided mightily in saving California for the Union, 
was once riding on a very slow train from Boston to New York with a 
friend, who asked Mr. King if he were going to fill a New York pulpit 
on the following day, which was Sunday. 

"No," replied the great preacher, "I am not going to fill, but I am 
going to rattle 'round in Henry Ward Beecher's." 

A comprehensive history of the American educational publishing 
business has never been prepared, although a number of writers have 
produced interesting and instructive books, booklets, periodical, magazine, 
and newspaper articles covering in some detail such portions of this history 
as engaged their attention. For instance, Dr. Meriwether and Professor 
Johnson have rather thoroughly and with reasonably satisfactory com- 
pleteness given us an account of the schoolbooks of colonial times and of 
the clumsy and slow process of manufacturing and distributing them. 
They have described in considerable detail the gruesome text matter of 
these early books, and their ugly and almost ludicrous illustrations. 

Ford has given us a most interesting and historically valuable account 
of the oldest American schoolbook, The New England Primer, prepared 
and printed by Benjamin Harris of Boston, the second edition appearing 
in 1691. This was printed 44 years after Massachusetts had passed a law 
requiring each town of fifty householders to "appoint one within their 
town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read." 
Others have written of the first Arithmetic, prepared by Nicholas Pike 
of Newburyport, Mass., and printed in 1788; of the first American 
Geography, written by the Reverend Jedidiah Morse of Charlestown, 
Mass., and published at New Haven in 1784 ; of the first pedagogical and 
educational book, written by Christopher Dock, America's pioneer writer 
on education, a second edition of which was published by Christopher 
Sower of Philadelphia in 1770. Much has been written concerning the 

1 



world-famous Blue Back Speller, prepared by Dr. Noah Webster and 
printed at Hartford in 1793 ; of Peter Parley's Geographies, the first of 
which was published in 1829. Dr. Henry H. Vail, formerly connected 
with the American Book Company, has written a most interesting history 
of the McGuffey Readers, of which the first two books of the four-book 
series were copyrighted in 1836 and the second two in 1837. 

Then there have been published such books as The House of Harper, 
which gives the history of a business concern now more than a hundred 
years old; a most charmingly written biography of Henry O. Houghton, 
the founder of the house now known as the Houghton Mifflin Company; 
a memorial volume giving in some detail the story of the life and activities 
of Henry Ivison, of the old firm of Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Company ; 
a book giving a rather complete account of several century-old business 
houses, including that of Christopher Sower & Company of Philadelphia ; 
a volume entitled Fifty Years Among Authors, Books and Publishers, by 
J. C. Derby; Memories of a Publisher, by Major George Haven Putnam; 
a book on the Old Schools and School-books of New England, by George 
E. Littlefield, and a brochure published by G. & C. Merriam Company that 
gives us some interesting glimpses into the history of their business and 
of the men who have published and distributed to the world the famous 
Webster dictionaries. 

There are also extant a great many valuable periodical, magazine and 
newspaper articles which set forth in some detail accounts of the founders 
of other nineteenth century publishing houses, which accounts, together 
with what has appeared in book form, make a rather inchoate but highly 
valuable mass of data that could and should be compiled and published 
as soon as a scholarly man of historical habit can be found to edit and 
prepare it for the press. 

Having a knowledge of the facts just stated, you will agree with me 
when I say that a writer of a* paper to be read in thirty or sixty minutes 
on a subject so broad in its scope and so important as the one assigned 
me, can't do more than "rattle 'round" in its field, to quote Starr King's 
figure. If he should try to do more, he would be tempting the Fates. 

Realizing, as you must, how unsatisfactory the isolated and unrelated 
fragments of our history are, do you not feel, as do I, that this Association 
should take early steps to find a thoroughly competent man to prepare 
for the fraternity of educational publishers a complete history of their 
business in America from the day when The New England Primer was 
printed in Boston to the present time? 

The attention of people is frequently called to the great march of 
progress since colonial days in all that helps to make the world a better 
place in which to live. It is truthfully said that both medicine and surgery 
have been perfected to such a high degree that the length of human life 
greatly has been increased ; that sanitary science is so well understood, 

2 

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P*blish«r 

mar ib mi 



and its principles so generally practiced, that disease germs born in filth 
no longer exist in such abundance as in the days when, because of the 
ignorance or indifference of the majority of the population, food, air, 
and water carried these breeders of disease to their unhappy victims. 
We are reminded of the electric light, the telegraph, the wireless, the ocean 
cable, and the telephone; of the leviathan of the ocean — the great and 
palatial steamship that crosses the Atlantic in five days ; of the aeroplane 
that has demonstrated its ability to fly across seas, oceans, and wide ex- 
panses of land, carrying passengers and mail at a speed almost inconceiv- 
able; of the transcontinental lines of railroad that transport people in 
comfort from ocean to ocean in six or seven days ; of the splendid speci- 
mens of art housed in our great museums ; of the beautiful homes, the 
really elegant school and college buildings, the great business structures 
planned by architects as skilled as any the world has produced since the 
days of the Greeks and the Moors; of the sewing machine, the reaper, 
the steam plow, the powerful motor truck, and the automobile; of the 
mighty steel bridges that span our wide rivers; and, in view of all this, 
we are told by the historian and the philosopher that the last century has 
been the Golden Age of the world, that all this has brought man a little 
closer to God, and God a little closer to man. 

The twentieth century school or college textbook, and the means em- 
ployed in making it, evidence a progress in the art of book-making and 
the character of the book made equally wonderful ; for the modern educa- 
tional publication differs in content and format from the textbook of the 
early days even more than the modern schoolhouse from the log cabin 
used a century or two ago to shelter the unfortunate youngsters who 
shivered and suffered therein while they were receiving such poor in- 
struction as ignorant masters and dames could give them. 

But there are a great number of people in this country, some of whom 
find their way into State, County, City, and Township Boards of Education, 
who cannot be made to believe that a textbook of this day and generation 
is very much, if any, better than the textbook of a century or even a half 
century ago. To their minds one book is practically as good as another, 
no matter whether modern or old. This, of course, is like saying that the 
ugly chromos that adorned (?) the walls of the parlors of country and 
many city homes fifty years ago were as useful and beautiful as works 
of art as the artistic, oils, etchings, and water-colors that one may now see 
commonly in the city and country homes of cultured people. 

The New York Sun said editorially, May 16, 1915, "Advance in the 
United States in its schools and improvement in the textbooks have been 
as great as in any other phase of American life." The New England 
Journal of June 24, 1909, said substantially the same thing in slightly 
different language, but in addition this : "The modern sewer system is no 

3 



greater improvement over that of 1840 than the examples and problems 
contained in modern arithmetics over those printed as of that date." 

In what respects does the modern schoolbook differ markedly from 
its forebears of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries ? 
A careful examination and inspection of the new in comparison with the old 
convinces one that the new differs radically from the old in (1) content, 
including both text matter and illustrations; (2) typography and printing; 
(3) binding; (4) maps; (5) size; and altogether in its much greater 
attractiveness as an educational instrument. 

Allow me to take a snapshot or two at some of the peculiar text 

matter printed in the American schoolbooks of the eighteenth and nineteenth 

centuries, in order that I may more clearly emphasize the contrast between 

the new and the old. I pass over the text of The New England Primer 

with its 

In Adam's fall 
We sinned all. 

Zaccheus he 
Did climb a tree, 
Our Lord to see. 
and 

A dog will bite 
A thief at night, 

reminding you only that the bulk of the book was composed of extracts 
from the Bible, of hymns, and of moral teachings ; that the backbone of 
this book — misnamed a primer, for it was not a primer at all as we now 
understand the term — was the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, 
which Cotton Mather called "a little watering-pot to shed good lessons" ; 
and lastly, that this primer was the only reader that children had until 
they were able to read the Bible. As dreadful as many of the doctrines 
taught in the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism were, Cotton 
Mather urged writing masters to set sentences from it to be copied by their 
pupils. 

Comparing itself with this earliest American schoolbook, the modern 
primer might, in the language of Chaucer, say without being guilty of 
immodesty : 

"O little booke, thou art so onconning, 

How darst thou put thyself in prees for drede?" 

George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, published in 1674 a 
Primer in England. This was republished in Philadelphia in 1701, in 
Boston in 1743, and in Newport in 1769. The book was not much used 
except by Friends. 

The text matter of Jonathan Fisher's A Youth's Primer, printed in 
1817, followed closely the text of The New England Primer. It contained 

4 



a series of short stories in alphabetical order, each followed by a religious, 
moral, or historical observation. The poor youngsters who were forced 
to read, day after day, from the pages of these early books, whose text 
matter was certainly lugubrious and distressing, were constantly reminded 
of death, the grave, a wrathful God, and a burning hell prepared for the 
wicked. 

The text matter of the early Arithmetics, while not as gruesome as 
that of the Readers, was in many respects so peculiar as to be quite beyond 
the understanding of the twentieth century teacher. Allow me to call 
your attention to two or three of the puzzling things contained in "Old 
Pike," as his Arithmetic was commonly known. 

When tare and tret and doff are allowed : 

Deduct the tare and tret, and divide the suttle by 168, and 

the quotient will be the cloff, which subtract from the suttle, and 

the remainder will be the neat. 

These definitions will help you to understand the old terms : 

Tare is an allowance, made to the buyer, for the weight of 
the box, barrel, or bag which contains, the goods bought. 

Tret is an allowance of 4 lbs. in every 104 lbs. for waste, 
dust, etc. 

Cloff is an allowance of 2 lbs. upon every 3 cwt. 

Suttle is, when part of the allowance is deducted. 

Neat weight is what remains after all allowances are made. 

The following rule is another of Pike's puzzles. This tells how to 
find the Gregorian Epact: 

Subtract 11 from the Julian Epact. If the subtraction cannot 
be made, add 30 to the Julian Epact, then subtract, and the re- 
mainder will be the Gregorian Epact. If nothing remains, the 
Epact is 29. 

You doubtless remember that an epact is the excess of the solar year 
over the twelve lunar months, or about eleven days. 

In Walsh's Mercantile Arithmetic, published in 1807, there is an 
example that certainly would not have pleased Neal Dow. This is the 
problem : 

If 8 boarders drink a barrel of cider in 12 days, how long 
would it last if 4 more came among them? 

I quote another problem that must surely have sent the distracted 
teacher to her dictionary for first aid to the tormented: 

How much will 189 bazar maunds (a maund— 82.14 lbs.) 
31 seer (a seer=2.06 lbs.) 8 chattacks (a chattack=l/16 of a 
seer, or 2 oz.) of sugar come to, at 6 rupees per maund? 

One arithmetic maker, Jacob Willetts, of Poughkeepsie, set many 
of his problems in rhyme; for instance, 

5 



When first the marriage knot was ty'd 

Between my wife and me, 
My age was to that of my bride, 

As three times three to three. 
But now when ten, and half ten years 

We man and wife have been, 
Her age to mine exactly bears, 

As eight is to sixteen ; 
Now tell, I pray, from what I've said, 

What were our ages when we wed ? 

Ans. — Thy age, when marry'd, must have been 
Just forty-five ; thy wife's fifteen. 

Dillworth's Schoolmaster's Assistant, first published in London in 
1774 and reprinted in Philadelphia in 1769, and considerably used in the 
colonies, contains two examples which the author called "Pleasant and 
Diverting Questions." The first is as follows: 

A farmer with a fox, a goose and a bag of corn has to 
cross a river in a boat so small that he can take only two of these 
three burdens with him at a time. How can he so handle matters 
that nothing will be destroyed, because he cannot leave the fox 
and the goose together, nor can he leave the goose and the corn. 

The next was an example, the solution of which might possibly be 
of practical help to distressed husbands: 

Three jealous husbands, each with a wife, meet on a river 
bank. How are they to cross so that none of the wives is left in 
the company of one or two men unless her husband is also present? 

As poor, from our point of view, as most of these old Arithmetics 
were, George Washington cordially recommended Pike's as "of great 
assistance to children desiring to learn the art of figuring." The pages 
in many of these early books were printed like those in the Adams, a 
copy of which I am able to show you, issued in 1814 at Keene, N. H. 
The text matter, as you see, occupies but a small part of the page, the 
rest being left to be filled with the solutions of problems that the children 
had first worked out on smooth shingles, scraps of paper, or slates, and 
then copied neatly on the pages where the solutions belonged. All these 
printed books were, of course, a great improvement over the Master's 
notebook of an earlier time, from which rules and problems were copied 
by the children, they not possessing a printed text. 

Note. — (1) In the library of Mr. George Plimpton are more than 
300 different Arithmetics printed before 1601, the largest collection ever 
brought together. 

Note. — (2) These old arithmeticians are responsible for what we 
know as the one-sixth discount, for they advertised their books at, say, 
$10.00 the dozen, the single copy $1.00. 

6 



Note. — (3) They were the pioneers in collecting and printing before 
the prefaces of their books, as Adams did before his preface, compli- 
mentary testimonials of their books — a practice that the modern publisher 
would hardly dare to follow. 

If the text matter of the early Readers was in many cases gruesome 
and distressing in its effect upon the youthful mind, and the explanations, 
rules, and problems in early Arithmetics were at times ludicrous and 
extremely puzzling, it is also the fact that much of the text printed in 
the first American Geographies was ridiculous because the writers fre- 
quently indulged their imaginations at the expense of geographical fact. 
Let me quote two or three examples showing how imagination played 
havoc with the truth. Dwight's Question and Answer Geography, printed 
at Hartford in 1798, contains the following: 

Q. What are the customs and diversions of the Irish? 

A. There are a few customs existing in Ireland peculiar to 
this country; these are their funeral howlings and presenting 
their corpses in the streets to excite the charity of strangers, their 
convivial meetings on Sunday, and dancing to bagpipes, which 
are usually attended with quarreling. 

Even the scholarly Morse, the author of the first Geography printed 
in the United States, indulges in some picturesque flights of imagination, 
as when he writes that the great men of the Friendly Islands "are fond 
of a singular kind of luxury, which is, to have women sit beside them 
all night, and beat on different parts of their body until they go to sleep ; 
after which, they relax a little of their labour, unless they appear likely 
to wake ; in which case they redouble their exertions, until they are again 
fast asleep." A careful reading of Mariner's Account of the Friendly 
Islands, a book published by John Murray & Sons in London in 1817, 
thirty-four years after Morse published his first Geography, reveals no 
account of any such custom, and Mariner lived in the Friendly Islands 
for a number of years. 

Adams declares in his Geography, published in 1814, that "the White 
Mountains are the highest, not only in New Hampshire, but in the United 
States." Of course he was speaking of the United States of 1814, — 
territory consisting of the original thirteen states and Kentucky, Tennessee, 
Ohio, and Louisiana, admitted at the time when Adams wrote his book, — 
but he evidently didn't know that Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina, the 
highest peak east of the Mississippi, is more than 400 feet higher than 
the mountain that bears Washington's name. 

If the geographers drew upon their imaginations when describing the 
physical features of the country, so also did the statesmen. That great 
apostle of democracy, Thomas Jefferson, sent a communication to Congress 
after the Louisiana Purchase, conveying what he considered good informa- 
tion about the new possession. The most curious statement in this strange 

7 



document was about the mountain of salt. He informed Congress that 
this mountain was said to be 180 miles long, 45 miles wide, and all of 
white, glittering salt, with salt rivers flowing from cavities at the base. 
In all probability Lewis and Clark disillusioned Mr. Jefferson in 1806, 
when they returned from their trip to the Pacific coast and gave accurate 
descriptions of the country they had traversed. 

The first English Grammar written in America was prepared by 
Professor Jones, a mathematical professor, as Dr. Chandler tells me, at 
William and Mary College. This book was written about 1703 and was 
printed in London. Only one copy of this grammar is now known, and 
that is contained in a London collection. Another book was prepared by 
Caleb Bingham, the first edition of which was printed in 1799. It was 
called The Young Lady's Accidence. This was the first English Grammar 
used in the Boston schools. Its only predecessor used in this country 
was Part II of Webster's Grammatical Institute. 

Lindley Murray left his native country and settled in England in 
1784. The following year he wrote and published in England his Gram- 
mar of the English Language. This Grammar was the standard textbook 
for fifty years throughout England and America. 

The illustrations in the early schoolbooks were as bad or worse than 
the text matter. They were not only entirely lacking in artistic quality, 
but, worse than that, they frequently pictured horrible things that the 
child during his school day had constantly under his observation. What 
twentieth century publisher would dare to use illustrations in Readers, 
Geographies, or any other textbooks, picturing the burning of an unfor- 
tunate victim at the stake, a widow burning on the funeral pyre of her 
husband, or the bloody details of an Indian massacre? And yet these 
awful things are pictured in a Geography not yet a hundred years old. 

Nearly all the books that appeared prior to 1840 were printed from 
type, for neither the stereotype nor the electrotype plate was in use before 
that time. Dr. Vail tells us that the early editions of the McGufTey 
Readers, copyrighted, as I have said, in 1836 and 1837, were so printed. 
The type impressions of the limited editions were clear and distinct for 
the most part. Whether these impressions would have been clear had 
as large and as many editions been printed from standing type as we now 
print from plates, is of course a matter of conjecture. 

It is not necessary to remind you that publishers may to-day furnish 
a duplicate set of plates to any concern on earth desiring to reproduce 
one of their books, and that the book may be reprinted by the purchaser 
without the bother and expense of resetting the type ; but the printer of 
the early days was not so fortunate, for if a concern in New York wished 
to reprint and sell a book originally printed in Boston, he was obliged to 
reset it, taking as copy the Boston production. 

8 



You remember that stereotyping was not perfected by Stanhope until 
1800, and that stereotype plates were not used in the manufacturing of 
schoolbooks until a later date, but that they were commonly used before 
electrotyping came into general use about 1860, though the Harpers used 
electrotyping in 1840 to duplicate wood cuts ; that wood engraving was 
used in Europe in 1430, but much earlier in China ; that copper engraving 
was used as early as 1450 ; that steel engraving was invented by Perkins, of 
Newburyportj Mass., in 1814; that the three-color process plate was first 
made by Frederick Ives of Philadelphia in 1881, but that the development 
of color work in schoolbooks has been within the last forty years. 

You recall the fact that the Adams or flat press was largely used 
until 1875 ; that the first flat-bed cylinder press used in America was 
a Napier brought from England in 1825 ; that in 1860 William Bullock 
began to experiment on a rotary self-feeding or web printing press, and 
finally achieved success in 1865. The web rotary press, as we know, can 
turn out about ten times as much work in a given time as the flat-bed 
cylinder press. Considering the fact that many millions of textbooks 
are now printed annually, requiring the service of high power rota » v 
presses to print their sheets in season for use, is it not indeed fortunate 
for the educational world that human skill has perfected such a really 
wonderful instrument as this great machine, so splendidly equipped for 
the accomplishment of this gigantic task ? 

The binding of books until a comparatively recent date was entirely 
done by hand. The process was so slow that only a few books could 
be bound in a day, even by the largest establishment. Folding machines 
were not used by binders until 1875, rounding and backing machines 
until about 1888, sewing machines and case-making machines until 
about 1890> gathering machines until about 1895, casing-in machines 
until about 1900. It is well known to you that a modern bindery in 
which up-to-date machinery is installed is able to produce per day from 
20,000 to 60,000 three-hundred-page sewed books of octavo size. It is 
therefore evident that there has been as wonderful an improvement in 
the method of binding books in the last century as in the method of 
printing them, and that the output of a modern bindery is now so enormous 
that it would have made the heads of the early hand binders dizzy just to 
think of it. 

The New England Printer was, of course, bound by hand. Its covers 
were of thin oak that cracked and splintered badly with use,' in spite of 
the coarse blue paper that was pasted over the wood. The back was of 
leather. Neither back nor sides had any printing on them. Yet, despite 
its ugly appearance, this book has had a sale of at least two million 
copies since Harris first printed it in or before 1691. 

The binding of the old Blue Back Speller until 1829 consisted of 
back of leather and sides of thin oaken boards pasted over with a dull 

9 



blue paper. ''Blue paper of a somewhat brighter tint," says Johnson, 
"was used on the later editions, which gave rise to the name Blue Back. 3 ' 
This book, as you know, has enjoyed a sale larger than that of any other 
Bchoolbook ever made in this or any other country — a sale which Mr. 
Appleton has recently told me has reached the stupendous figure of sixty- 
four millions of copies. 

Adams' Arithmetic, which I have shown you, you observe was covered 
with leather pasted over a very thin pasteboard. It had no headbands, 
and its* sheets were stitched by hand. Leather binding on the larger books, 
Dr. Vail tells us, persisted for a number of years after the beginning of 
the nineteenth century. This gentleman informs us that the First Reader 
of the original McGurley series made a thin 18mo book of 72 pages, having 
green paper covered sides. 

Peter Parley's Method of Telling About Geography, published in 
1829, was a thin, square little book with leather back and flexible paste- 
board sides. His National Geography, published in 1845, was the earliest 
to take the large, flat quarto shape. This form enabled it to include good- 
sized maps and do away with the necessity for a separate atlas. 

Cover designs were not used until quite late in the nineteenth century, 
and of course books whose covers bore no designs of any sort were far 
less attractive than those bound to-day. 

In 1874, under the direction of Mr. James McNally, of Rand McNally 
& Company, that concern began the publication of atlases, pocket and 
large wall maps. In 1872, the Company had introduced the then new 
relief line engraving process for making maps — a process which revolu- 
tionized the methods of that day and cut the cost of production by several 
hundred per cent. Maps that can now be bought for from 25 cents to 
$1.00 each used to cost, under the old method of map making, all the 
way from $5.00 to $10.00 apiece. The modern map, well and thoroughly 
made, records faithfully every fact concerning the surface of the earth 
now known to man, and there is very little about it that scholarly 
geographers do not now know. In addition to the modern map's accuracy, 
it is as much more attractive than its forebears to the eye as the beautiful 
color pictures now used in textbooks are seen to be when compared with 
the muddy wood cuts that appeared in schoolbooks a century or more ago. 

It is not necessary for me to speak in such a presence as this of the 
contents of modern schoolbooks in order to point out how vastly superior 
in every respect they are to the contents of books of the earlier days. 
It would be a work of supererogation for me to comment at length, for 
instance, upon the character of the literature now included in reading 
books, or to note the scientific work that is now commonly done in the 
preparation of one of the most difficult books to prepare, namely, the 
primer, whose text matter and vocabulary are so splendidly adapted to 
the capacity of the young child, and whose illustrations picture his pets, 

10 



his toys, his games, his playmates, and other things with which he is 
thoroughly familiar. I asked a literary friend to pick out a half dozen 
of the choicest selections of literature that he knew in modern readers. 
He replied as follows: 

"Even a cursory survey of modern school readers soon reveals that 
no period in the whole world's literature has been neglected as a source 
of selection. We have majestic passages from the Bible, Shakespeare, 
Milton, Bacon, and Bunyan. The later centuries of English literature 
afford the names of Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, Browning, 
Dickens, Thackeray, and on to Tennyson and Stevenson. The early 
classic American period contributes freely from Longfellow, Lowell 
Emerson, Thoreau, and Irving, and our early patriots and philosophers 
like Washington, Patrick Henry, Franklin, and Lincoln, live to-day in 
the school readers. Even our modern authors have their place. James 
Whitcomb Riley, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Joel 
Chandler Harris, and a score of others are no strangers to the child who 
has in his possession a school reader of the present day. If these were 
not enough, we have occasional excursions into the Greek and Roman 
myths, and for the little people touches of the fascinating German and 
Scandinavian folklore. 

"Most wonderful of all, however, is the skill of the editors and 
publishers of these modern readers in selecting from this world-wide 
galaxy of authors just the particular poem, tale, or episode that the 
childish mind can assimilate and digest, and thus be left not only with 
an introduction to these famous authors, but better yet with a desire to 
know more of them." 

Recently it was my pleasure to examine the illustrations in a set of 
modern school readers. I found in them a number of pictures beautifully 
done in color, copied from some of the masterpieces of world-famous 
artists, as, for instance, The Age of Innocence, by Reynolds, The Blue 
Boy, Gainsborough, The Melon Eaters, Murillo, Portrait of a Man, Franz 
Hals, King David, Rubens, Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci, The Tapestry 
Weavers, Velasquez, The Architect, Rembrandt, as well as many others 
made from drawings cleverly done by artists of manifest ability. The 
pictures in this series of readers were evidently selected with as much 
care as the text, which contained selections of high literary value. 

"If I were asked," said James Russell Lowell, "what book is better 
than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a 
cheap book, and that is a book honestly come by." 

Prior to the enactment of state copyright laws, the first of which 
was passed by Connecticut in 1783 and the last of which were enacted 
by Georgia and New York in 1786, and the passage of a national copy- 
right law by Congress in 1790, literary property had no protection what- 
ever against piracy. Printers could help themselves ad lib. to books of 

11 



all kinds turned out by other printers. Dr. Noah Webster, realizing the 
danger to an author arising from such piracy, labored diligently for many 
years to secure the enactment of a copyright law. He pleaded that the 
Constitution of the United States authorized Congress to "promote the 
progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors 
and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and dis- 
coveries." 

Previous to the adoption of the Constitution in 1787, the nation had 
no power to act, but on Madison's motion Congress in May, 1783, 
recommended the states to pass acts securing copyright for fourteen 
years. Dr. Webster traveled from state to state, urging members of 
legislatures to secure the passage of copyright laws in their states, and 
some thirteen states did pass such laws prior to the national act ; but when 
Congress finally took action in the matter, Webster's work was done. 
It was to his great advantage and that of all authors who have produced 
books subsequent to 1790 that a national law preventing the stealing of 
literary property was passed. To Noah Webster and his successful work 
in securing the enactment of a national copyright law, the literary world 
owes a great debt. 

The international copyright bill passed Congress March 3, 1891, thanks 
to the diligent and unceasing labors of Mr. W. W. Appleton, the present 
President of the Copyright League, Major George Haven Putnam, its 
Secretary, and Robert Underwood Johnson. 

It is my hope that this brief and most incomplete historical sketch 
will convince us afresh of the truth of such almost axiomatic statements 
as that made in the New York Sun in 1915, namely, that the advance in 
the United States in textbooks has been as great as in any other phase of 
American life. Large credit is due both to authors and to publishers for 
this really wonderful advancement, for both have keenly realized the truth 
of Disraeli's epigram which declared that "the youth of a nation are the 
trustees of posterity," and have labored diligently to place in the hands 
of this youth books sound in their pedagogy, accurate as to facts, inspiring 
in their influence, and as attractive as possible in their appearance, to the 
end that these trustees of posterity may be sent from the schools full 
armed to cope successfully with ignorance, foolish and dangerous theories 
concerning religious and political life, and all other evils that now or in 
the future may menace our civilization. 

The immortal Milton declared that "a good book is the precious life 
blood of a master spirit." It has been and will continue to be the happy 
privilege of the publisher to clothe the good book of the master spirit in 
a style befitting its character, and to place it within the reach of those who 
should have its message. That the educational publisher is doing that 
work with much greater skill now than at any time during the past two 
centuries is manifest ; that he will, as time grows apace, do it increasingly 
better, who can doubt? 

12 



A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICAN 
EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS 

Allow me to close this paper by giving a brief record of the organiza- 
tion of the houses now engaged in educational publishing, mentioning the 
titles of some of the earlier textbooks produced. In this brief record I 
have considered the history of these houses in chronological sequence rather 
than in alphabetical order, beginning with the earliest American house 
engaged in textbook publishing. 

CHRISTOPHER SOWER COMPANY.— Christopher Sower 
(Saiir), the founder of this house, issued in 1733 as his first venture in 
publishing, a schoolbook entitled Ein ABC und Buchstabier Buck. In 
1747 he published a German and English Grammar ; in 1750, The Golden 
A B C, or the School of Knowledge in Rhymes (English translation of 
German title) ; in 1771, The New England Primer, Enlarged. Although 
he began publishing in German, he was soon printing in both German and 
English, and he issued from six to twelve books a year until his death. 
His most important educational publication was Die Schul-Ordnung, writ- 
ten by Christopher Dock, a remarkable schoolmaster in Montgomery 
County, Pennsylvania. This is known as the first American treatise on 
school teaching. 

In 1758 Christopher Sower was succeeded by his son, Christopher 
Sower, 2nd, and he by his son, Samuel. In 1799 another son, David, Sr., 
took charge of the business. In 1842 Charles G., son of David, Jr., 
succeeded his father. In 1888, 150 years after the founding, the firm 
was incorporated as the Christopher Sower Company, with Charles D. 
Sower as President. In 1910 the officers were: Albert M. Sower, Presi- 
dent; James L. Pennypacker, Vice President; Daniel B. Hassan, Secre- 
tary and Treasurer. 

LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY, INC.— This business began as 
a retail store started by Ebenezer Battelle in Boston in 1784. Four years 
later the concern issued its first book and became a publisher in the strict 
sense of the word. From 1784 to 1913 there was a succession of partners 
entering and leaving the organization, and in the early days the name 
of the house was changed frequently, according to the changes in partner- 
ship. The name of Little & Brown was adopted in 1830, when James 
Brown and Charles C. Little owned the business. James Brown may 
more truly be called the founder of the present house than any other 
one man. In 1898 Little, Brown & Company absorbed the successful 
publishing firm of Roberts Brothers of Boston, thereby securing a large 

13 



miscellaneous line, including the works of Louisa Alcott. In 1913 the 
house was incorporated as Little, Brown & Company, Inc., without change 
in the personnel of the organization. 

The present educational enterprise of this company was started in 
May, 1904, and the first two schoolbooks of the present list were a school 
edition of The Man Without a Country, and the series known as the 
Wide Awake Readers. Little, Brown & Company are known as the pub- 
lishers of Bancroft's History of the United States, also of Daniel Webster's 
works. 

BENZIGER BROTHERS.— This firm was founded in 1792 in 
Einsiedeln, Switzerland, by Joseph Charles Benziger. In 1883, he was 
succeeded by his sons, Charles and Nicholas Benziger. 

In 1853, the New York house was founded. J. N. Adelrich Benziger, 
a son of Charles, and Louis, a son of Nicholas, took charge of the New 
York house. The American firm is now entirely independent of its parent 
house in Switzerland. In 1860 a branch house was opened in Cincinnati, 
Ohio. In 1880, Nicholas C. Benziger became a partner. His father, 
Nicholas, was a partner in Einsiedeln, and was the son of Nicholas men- 
tioned above. In 1887, a branch house was opened in Chicago. In 1894, 
Louis G. Benziger, son of Louis, became a partner, retiring in 1914. In 
1912 Xavier N. Benziger, and in 1919 Bernard A. Benziger, both sons of 
Nicholas C, became partners. 

This firm has been publishing schoolbooks since I860. From 1874 to 
1877 the Gilmour Readers were published. The Catholic National Readers 
were brought out in the years 1889-1894. The New Century Catholic 
Readers were issued from 1903 to 1905. The house has also published 
a History of the United States in two volumes, an Elementary Geography, 
Advanced Geography, and two series of Arithmetics. 

The present partners of the firm are Nicholas C. Benziger and his sons, 
Xavier N. and Bernard A. Benziger. 

BENJ. H. SANBORN & CO.— Mr. Young, the present President 
of this organization, writes : 

"The records of the family tree of the Sanborn publications go back 
into the eighteenth century. The predecessors of the present concern 
appear to have been in the textbook business from the beginning, and to 
have specialized in English grammars. The earliest trace we have is 
of the publication of Stamford's Short but Comprehensive Grammar 
Rendered Simple and Easy by Familiar Questions and Answers Adapted 
to the Capacity of Youth. This was printed by Mannering & Loring, of 
Boston, January, 1797. Later came The Elements of English Grammar 
by Adoniram Judson in 1808. Following Mannering & Loring came the 
firm of Loring & Edmunds. They were the publishers of Lindley Mur- 
ray's Grammar. Following Loring & Edmunds came Robert S. Davis, 

14 



then Robert S. Davis & Company, then Leach, Shewell & Sanborn, and 
now Benj. H. Sanborn & Company. 

"In addition to the Lindley Murray Grammar, one of the notable 
achievements of the predecessors of Benj. H. Sanborn & Company was 
the publication of the Greenleaf Arithmetics. The first contract for these 
books goes back to 1832. Greenleaf, by the way, a Maine teacher, sold 
the copyright of his first book for $10,000 in gold. This was more money 
than Greenleaf had ever seen before in his life, and he at once took the 
boat to Boston to deposit it." 

JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC.— Charles Wiley established the 
business in 1807. John Wiley came into it as a clerk in 1820 and continued 
until 1890. He had associated with him at various times George Palmer 
Putnam, Mr. Long, and Robert Halsted. The concern became John Wiley 
& Sons in 1865. Major William H. Wiley entered it in 1875, and W. 
O. Wiley in 1890. The house was incorporated in 1904. 

The first educational publication was a History of the United States, 
which was issued by the founder of the house just after the War of 1812,, 
and contained an account of that war. The first technical book was 
published in 1819, entitled A View of the Lead Mines of Missouri, by 
Henry R. Schoolcraft. 

HARPER & BROTHERS.— This house was founded in 1817 by 
John Harper, Wesley Harper, James Harper, and Fletcher Harper. 
Harper & Brothers began to publish educational books in 1836, the 
title of their first publication being Professor Anthon's Classical 
Series. Some of their most notable educational books are the Harper 
Geographies, Harper's United States Series of Readers, Harper's Arith- 
metics, Rolfe's Shakespeare, Swinton's Language Books, Green's Short 
History of the English People, Harper's Greek and Latin texts. In 1890 
or thereabouts, the American Book Company bought the educational list 
of Harper & Brothers. 

James Harper, the oldest brother of the original four Harpers, was 
elected Mayor of New York City in 1844. He originated the idea of 
the magazine, and Fletcher, who was an unusually fine business man, the 
idea of Harper's Weekly. 

D. APPLETON & COMPANY.— Mr. Daniel Appleton, who was 
a dry goods merchant in Boston, moved and established himself in business 
in New York in 1825. He began the bookselling business at 16 Exchange 
Place by the importation of editions of English books. The bookselling 
business was soon carried on by Daniel Appleton's eldest son, William 
H. Appleton. The first book published in this country by Mr. Appleton 
was a little volume entitled Crumbs fromJhe Master's Table, issued in 1831. 
William H. Appleton became a partner with his father in 1838, and the 
firm became D. Appleton & Company. In 1848, Daniel Appleton retired, 

15 



and William H. and his brother, John A. Appleton, became partners in 
the business. Daniel Appleton died in 1849. His son, Daniel Sidney 
Appleton, became a partner in 1849, and later George S. Appleton and 
Samuel Francis Appleton, also sons of Daniel Appleton, became partners. 
D. Appleton & Company was incorporated in 1897. Mr. W. W. Appleton 
writes : 

"I cannot give the exact time when educational books were first 
issued, but somewhat late in the 1830's a number of such works were 
published, some of them in foreign languages — French, Spanish, and 
German — and in the 40's several more were added. In the 1850's the 
educational list became much more important and included Cornell's 
Series of Geographies, Quackenbos's standard textbooks, Perkins' Arith- 
metics, Mandeville's Readers, and a great number of educational books 
in the Spanish language. One of the most interesting publications was 
Noah Webster's Elementary Spelling Book, which was originally issued 
in Hartford as the first part of A Grammatical Institute of the English 
Language. D. Appleton & Company secured the publication of Webster's 
Speller in 1855, and it sold nearly a million copies a year up to the beginning 
of the Civil War." 

VAN ANTWERP, BRAGG & COMPANY.— The original firm 
of which this company was the successor was Truman & Smith, organized 
about 1834 by William B. Truman and Winthrop B. Smith. On June 2, 
1834, this house published an Introduction to Ray's Eclectic Arithmetic. 
It was the firm's first schoolbook. Mr. Truman retiring, Mr. Smith 
carried on the business of educational publishing in the second story over 
a small shop on Main Street, Cincinnati. He was the sole proprietor of 
the McGuffey Readers and his other publications from 1841 until about 
1852. He then admitted, as partners, Edward Sargent and Daniel Bartow 
Sargent, his wife's brothers, and the firm name became W. B. Smith & Co. 

Mr. Smith made an arrangement with Clark, Austin & Smith, of 
New York, to become the Eastern publishers of the McGuffey Readers, 
and a duplicate set of plates was sent to New York. From these plates, 
editions of the Readers were manufactured, largely at Claremont, N. H., 
bearing on the title page the imprint of Clark, Austin & Smith. The 
Smith of this firm was Cornelius Smith, a brother of Winthrop B. Smith. 

Mr. W. B. Smith retiring, a new firm under the name of Sargent, 
Wilson & H inkle was organized April 20, 1863, with Edward Sargent, 
Obed J. Wilson, and Anthony H. Hinkle as partners, and with W. B. 
Smith and D. B. Sargent as special partners. In 1866, Mr. Lewis Van 
Antwerp was admitted as a partner, and on April 20, 1868, the firm of 
Sargent, Wilson & Hinkle was dissolved. Mr. Sargent retired, and the 
new firm, Wilson, Hinkle & Co., bought all the assets. Mr. Caleb Bragg 
in 1871 became a partner in Wilson, Hinkle & Co. On April 20, 1877, 

16 



the firm of Wilson, Hinkle & Co. was dissolved, and the business was 
purchased by the new firm, Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co., of which Lewis 
Van Antwerp, Caleb S. Bragg, Henry H. Vail, Robert F. Leaman, A. 
Howard Hinkle, and Henry T. Ambrose were the partners. 

Mr. Van Antwerp retired January 22, 1890, just previous to the 
sale of the copyrights and plates owned by the firm to the American 
Book Company. The four active partners in that firm, each of whom 
had been in the schoolbook business some twenty-five years, entered the 
employ of the American Book Company. Mr. Bragg and Mr. Hinkle 
remained in charge of the Cincinnati business, Dr. Vail and Mr. Ambrose 
went to New York, the former as Editor-in-chief, the latter at first as 
Treasurer, but later he became the President of the Company. 

The most notable books published by these several firms, preceding 
and including Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co., were McGufTey's Readers and 
Speller, Ray's Arithmetics, and Harvey's Grammars. 

G. & C. MERRIAM COMPANY.— The business was started in 
1831, but the publication of Webster's Dictionary was not undertaken 
until 1843. The founders were the brothers, George and Charles Merriam, 
and the original copartnership style was G. & C. Merriam. In 1856 Homer 
Merriam joined the other brothers, with no change in the firm style. 

In 1882 the firm name was changed to G. & C. Merriam & Company, 
and at that time Orlando M. Baker and H. Curtis Rowley were admitted 
to partnership. In 1892 the copartnership was changed to a corporation, 
styled G. & C. Merriam Company. George Merriam, one of the founders 
of the company, died shortly before 1882, and about that time Charles 
Merriam retired from the firm. Thereafter the active management 
of the business devolved upon Mr. Baker and Mr. Rowley. Later Mr. 
K. N. Washburn was made one of the Managers. Mr. Baker died in 
1914, and at the present time the active management of the business is in 
the hands of Mr. Rowley, Mr. Baker's two sons, A. G. Baker and H. W. 
Baker, and Mr. Washburn. 

The original firm of G. & C. Merriam, shortly after becoming 
established in 1831, began publishing educational books in a small way. 
The first of these publications seem to have been a series of school readers, 
The Child's Guide, Village Reader, etc. For many years, however, and 
probably almost from the time that they acquired the rights in Webster's 
Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam and their successors have confined their 
publications to the Genuine Webster Dictionaries. 

WILLIAM H. SADLIER.— The founder of the business was Denis 
Sadlier, who organized a general Catholic publishing house in 1835. In 
1841, James, the brother of Denis, was admitted to partnership, the firm 
name being D. & J. Sadlier & Co. Upon the death of the original partners, 
the firm was continued by James F., the son of Denis Sadlier. 

17 



In 1872, William H. Sadlier left the old firm and started a purely 
textbook publishing house. His first books were the Excelsior Geogra- 
phies, followed shortly by the Excelsior Histories and Readers, and then 
a general line of Catholic textbooks. William H. Sadlier died in 1877 
and the business was continued by his widow, Annie M. Sadlier, who 
still lives and who may rightfully claim to be the original business woman 
of New York. A law had to be passed in the Assembly permitting her 
to do business under her husband's name. Mrs. Sadlier retired about ten 
years ago, and the business is now being conducted by her son, Frank 
X. Sadlier, of the third generation. The surviving textbooks of the original 
firm are now being published by the firm of William H. Sadlier, which 
is the lineal successor of the original firm of D. & J. Sadlier & Company. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.— This firm was founded in 1837 by the 
late George Palmer Putnam, who was born at Brunswick, Maine, in 
1814 and died in 1872. The London House was established in 1841. Some 
years after the death of Mr. George Palmer Putnam, the firm was changed 
into a corporation under the laws of the State of New York. Since 1880, 
the President of the corporation has been Major George Haven Putnam, 
who was born in London in 1844. 

Educational books, that is to say, books for the use of higher grade 
students, have been included in the Putnam list, but common school books 
have not been included. The first book coming under the description of 
"educational" published by the house was The Tabular Views of Universal 
History, compiled in 1832 by the late George Palmer Putnam. 

The present firm consists of Major George Haven Putnam, Irving 
Putnam, Sidney Haven Putnam, Edmund W. Putnam, and George Palmer 
Putnam, under the firm name of G. P. Putnam's Sons. 

A. S. BARNES & COMPANY.— The business of this firm was 
begun by Mr. A. S. Barnes about 1837 at Hartford, Conn., but soon moved 
to Philadelphia, Pa., where the title of the firm was changed to A. S. 
Barnes & Burr, Mr. Burr being a brother-in-law of Mr. Barnes. A few 
years later the business was moved to 51 John Street, New York City. 
The name of Burr disappeared from the firm early in its New York days, 
and the title became A. S. Barnes & Company. After a few years at 51 
John Street, the business was moved to 111-113 William Street, where 
it remained until 1890, when the textbook publications were purchased by 
the American Book Company. During the period between the establish- 
ment of the business in New York and 1890, Mr. Barnes took in as 
partners, in the order named, his son Alfred C. Barnes, Henry W. 
Curtis, Charles J. Barnes, a nephew, and Henry B. Barnes, Edwin M. 
Barnes, Richard S. Barnes, and William D. Barnes, all sons of A. S. 
Barnes. At the time of the sale of the business to the American Book 

18 



Company, the partners of the firm consisted of the five sons of A. S. 
Barnes, and Charles J. Barnes of Chicago. 

In 1837, Mr. A. S. Barnes published a series of mathematical books 
written by Professor Charles Davies. Other well-known publications of 
the house were Monteith's Geographies, Barnes' Histories, Parker and 
Watson's Readers, Barnes' Readers, Steele's Science Series, and Maxwell's 
Grammars. 

CHARLES E. MERRILL COMPANY.— Mr. Merrill writes : 
"It appears that the original house was founded by William G. 
Webster, a son of Dr. Noah Webster, author of the Dictionary, and Lucius 
E. Clark, a farmer's son who was born at Washington, Conn., July 4, 1814. 
They began business under the name of Webster & Clark in 1842. 
A few years later Mr. Webster retired and Mr. Clark, associated with 
Jeremiah B. Austin of Wallingford, Conn., continued the business under 
the name of Clark & Austin. Soon afterward Cornelius Smith of W. B. 
Smith & Co. of Cincinnati became a partner and the firm name was 
changed to Clark, Austin & Smith. In 1859, Mr. Smith died and the 
firm was reorganized under the name of Clark, Austin, Maynard & 
Company, Effingham Maynard and Livingston Snedeker being admitted 
to partnership. 

"The Civil War, beginning two years later, brought disaster to the 
firm. A large amount of money due from Southern customers was uncol- 
lectable and after a desperate struggle to hold over, a compromise with its 
creditors became necessary. After obtaining releases from creditors, the 
business was resumed in 1863 by Clark & Maynard, whose careful and 
efficient management enabled them in 1872 to pay in full, principal and 
interest, all the debts from which the firm of Clark, Austin, Maynard & 
Company had been released. Their most notable contributions to text- 
book publishing were the Anderson Historical Series and the Reed & 
Kellogg Grammars. 

"Mr. Clark retired from business at the close of 1888, and Mr. 
Maynard, with Mr. Everett Yeaw of Lawrence, Mass., continued the 
business under the firm name of Effingham Maynard & Company. In 
1893, the firm consolidated with that of Charles E. Merrill & Company, 
consisting of Charles E. Merrill and Edwin C. Merrill, the resulting organ- 
ization being incorporated under the name of Maynard, Merrill & Com- 
pany. Its officers were Effingham Maynard, Charles E. Merrill, Everett 
Yeaw, and Edwin C. Merrill. Mr. Maynard died in 1899. Mr. Charles 
E. Merrill bought the Maynard interest from the two sons of Mr. 
Maynard, and the name of the corporation was changed to Charles E. 
Merrill Company. In 1910 Mr. Yeaw, now the head of Newson & Com- 
pany, retired from the organization, which was joined a few years later 
by Mr. Edwin W. Fielder. The present officers are Charles E. Merrill, 

19 



President, Charles E. Merrill, Jr., Vice President, Halsey M. Collins, 
Secretary, and Edwin W. Fielder, Treasurer. These officers, with Harold 
S. Brown, are the directors." 

IVISON, BLAKEMAN, TAYLOR & COMPANY.— Mr. Henry 
Ivison, a bookseller at Auburn, N. Y., came to New York City in 1846 
and was admitted to the firm of Mark H. Newman & Company. In 1852, 
a new partnership for three years was founded under the firm name of 
Newman & Ivison, but the senior partner died before the end of the first 
year, leaving the business entirely in Mr. Ivison's hands. Mr. Ivison later 
bought out the entire interest of the concern and took in as a partner H. F. 
Phinney of Cooperstown, N. Y., an experienced bookseller and son-in-law 
of J. Fenimore Cooper. In 1866, Mr. Phinney's health failed and Messrs. 
Birdseye Blakeman, Augustus C. Taylor, and Mr. Ivison's eldest son, 
David B., were admitted to the firm, which was continued under the name 
of Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co. Subsequently, on the withdrawal of 
Mr. Phinney, the firm name was changed to Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor 
& Co. Mr. Ivison retired from the firm in 1881. In 1890, the business 
of this concern was purchased by the American Book Company. 

In Ivison & Company's Almanac for the year 1847 are found ad- 
vertisements of Porter's Rhetorical Reader, Newman's Rhetoric and 
Elements of Political Economy, Day and Thomson's Series of Practical 
Arithmetic, Sander's School Readers, Wilson's Histories of the United 
States, Bradbury & Sanders' Young Choir or School Singing Book, Gray's 
Elements of Chemistry, and Hitchcock's Elementary Geology. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.— The business was founded in 
1846 by Isaac D. Baker and Charles Scribner, under the firm name of Baker 
& Scribner. Later the organization became a partnership under the different 
names of Charles Scribner & Company, and Scribner & Armstrong. Mr. 
Charles Scribner died in 1871, and was succeeded by his eldest son, John 
Blair Scribner. Mr. Armstrong retired in 1878 and the business was then 
reorganized as a partnership under the firm name of Charles Scribner 's 
Sons, with John Blair Scribner as the head, the other partners being 
Charles Scribner and Arthur H. Scribner, sons of the founder. When 
John Blair Scribner died in 1879, Charles Scribner became the head of 
the business. In 1904, the corporation of Charles Scribner's Sons was 
formed with Charles Scribner, President, and Arthur H. Scribner, Vice 
President, and that organization remains the same in 1921. 

Among the earliest educational publications of the house are a treatise 
in physical geography entitled The Earth and Man, by A. Guyot, translated 
by C. C. Felton and published in 1849 ; Felter's Arithmetics, 1864 ; Guyot's 
Wall Maps, 1865 ; Perry's Elements of Political Economy, 1865 ; Guyot's 
Geographies, 1866; Porter's Human Intellect, 1868; Cooley's Chemistry, 

20 



1869; Cooky's Natural Philosophy, 1871 ; Cooley's Physics Experiments, 
1871 ; Hopkins' Outline Study of Man, 1873. 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.— This firm originally was 
Lippincott, Grambo & Company, founded in 1850, and later became 
J. B. Lippincott Company. The present Lippincott who is the head of the 
concern is the son of the original founder, J. B. Lippincott. 

Some of the old-time schoolbooks published by J. B.- Lippincott 
Company were Comly's Speller, Sanford's Arithmetic, Cutter's Anatomy, 
Wilson's Readers, and Webster's Speller. In 1876, the firm purchased 
from Brewer & Tileston of Boston the entire rights in Worcester's 
Dictionary. The House has published in this country Gibbon's Decline 
and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume's and Macaulay's Histories of 
England. It also projected Lippincott 3 s Magazine in 1867, issuing the 
first number in January, 1868. Its first editor was Lloyd Smith, the 
librarian of the Philadelphia library. 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD COMPANY.— In 1850, Daniel 
Lothrop and his brothers, John and Henry, formed a partnership known 
as D. Lothrop & Company for the publishing of books in Dover, N. H. 
Their early publications were mostly juvenile, and largely for use in 
Sunday School libraries. A little more than ten years later, the business 
was removed to Boston, and later incorporated as D. Lothrop Company. 
After the death of Daniel Lothrop, the business was reorganized in 1891 
as the Lothrop Publishing Company, and so continued until 1904, when all 
its assets were purchased by Lee & Shepard. 

The Lothrop house published a great many books of educational value, 
like Gilman's Historical Readers, in three volumes, and Miss Cyr's Inter- 
state Primer and First Reader. Their most important educational book 
was Finger Plays, by Emilie Poulsson, of which 110,000 copies have 
been sold. 

The firm of Lee & Shepard was founded in Boston in 1861 by William 
Lee, who had previously been a partner of Phillips Sampson & Company, 
a Boston publishing house which went out of existence in the 50's, and 
Charles A. B. Shepard. Mr. Shepard died in 1889, and Mr. Lee continued 
as sole partner until June, 1898, when he transferred his entire business to 
E. Fleming & Company, book binders, who continued the business by 
placing it in charge of Warren F. Gregory. 

Lee & Shepard were general publishers and, like D. Lothrop & 
Company, had strong lines of juveniles which were much used in school 
libraries. Of their distinctively educational books, the most successful 
were King's Picturesque Geographical Readers, in six volumes. 

In 1904, the owners of Lee & Shepard purchased the entire assets 
of the Lothrop Publishing Company, and incorporated the combined 
houses under the style Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Company. Mr. Gregory, 

21 



the Manager of Lee & Shepard, was elected General Manager and has held 
that position since. Among its most important works used educationally, 
in addition to those mentioned above, are the True Story Series, the U. S. 
Service Series, the translation of Froebel's Mother Play, with Music, 
and books for younger readers. 

SHELDON & COMPANY.— Mr. Smith Sheldon of Albany, N. Y., 
organized a firm which began business in New York City in 1853 at 115 
Nassau Street. He was soon joined by Mr. Birdseye Blakeman, who 
afterward became a member of the firm of Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & 
Company. In 1857 Isaac E. Sheldon, eldest son of Smith Sheldon, 
became a partner, and subsequently Isaac Shailor entered the firm. Mr. 
Shailor was killed a few years later in his barn by a stroke of lightning. 
This must have been in the early 70's, and about that time Mr. Sheldon's 
younger sons, Alexander E. Sheldon and William D. Sheldon, were made 
members of the firm. 

Some time in the 60's Mason and Hamlin, the organ people, sold to 
the Sheldons their schoolbooks, such as the Stoddard Mathematics, Haven's 
and Wayland's Philosophies, and other standard books. Sheldon & Com- 
pany had branched out into almost all classes of publication, including 
novels, autobiographies, religious books, hymn books, schoolbooks, etc., 
and in addition published what was known as the Galaxy Magazine. In 
1877, the house decided to make a specialty of schoolbooks, and gave up 
its other lines of publication. Among the school and college textbooks 
which they brought out were Olney's Mathematics, Avery's Science Series, 
Hill's Rhetorics, Logic and Psychology, Shaw's Literature, Sheldon's 
Word Studies, Sheldon's Modern School Readers, and Patterson's 
Grammars. 

In 1891, the firm was incorporated under the name of Sheldon & 
Company, with Isaac E. Sheldon as President and Joseph K. Butler as 
Secretary and Treasurer. The following year they purchased the business 
of Taintor Brothers. Later the house of E. H. Butler & Company was 
merged with Sheldon & Company, there being included in E. H. Butler & 
Company the firm of Cowperthwait & Company of Philadelphia, and a 
Pittsburgh firm, the name of which I think was H. I. Gurley & Company. 
Isaac E. Sheldon died about the first of July, 1898, and E. H. Butler 
was made President, the firm becoming Butler, Sheldon & Company. 
On January 1, 1903, the business of Butler, Sheldon & Company was 
purchased by the American Book Company and its books added to the 
list of that concern. 

RAND McNALLY & COMPANY.— In 1859 Mr. William H. Rand 
was operating a job printing business at 148 Lake Street, Chicago. About 
that time his plant was consolidated with the job department of the Chicago 
Tribune. In 1862, Mr. Andrew McNally, who had been in partnership 

22 



with Mr. John Collins in the printing and stationery business on North 
Clark Street, sold his interest and purchased a partnership in the Tribune 
job office. He became superintendent of the business. In 1864, Rand and 
McNally bought out the Tribune interest in the job printing, and founded 
the copartnership of Rand McNally & Company. The Company was 
incorporated in 1873. The present President of the concern is Mr. H. B. 
Clow. 

Rand McNally & Company has been known as map makers, book 
publishers, atlas makers, bank publishers, ticket manufacturers, creators 
of map systems, and other specialties. It has published the Dodge Geogra- 
phies, the Mace Histories, and a number of other large selling educational 
books. 

HENRY HOLT & COMPANY.— In 1866, the copartnership of 
Frederick Leypoldt and Henry Holt was formed under the style of 
Leypoldt & Holt. From the start they were merely publisher and not 
retailers or printers. In 1871, H. O. Williams was admitted to the firm ; 
Mr. Leypoldt soon withdrew, and the firm name was changed to Holt & 
Williams. Two years later Mr. Williams retired and the business was 
continued as Henry Holt & Company. Charles Holt, a brother of Henry 
Holt, was an active partner from 1878 to 1903, when the house became a 
stock company with Henry Holt as President, Roland Holt, Vice President, 
Edward N. Bristol, Secretary, Joseph F. Vogelius, Treasurer. In 1919, 
Mr. Vogelius resigned after more than fifty years' connection with the 
house. 

The firm's first educational venture occurred in 1867, when the foreign 
language publications of S. R. Urbino and DeVries, Ibarra & Company 
of Boston were taken over. These two lists included the Otto French 
and German Grammars and some sixty French and German texts. Most 
of these same texts still appear in Henry Holt & Company's list, though 
not in the form first issued. In 1869, the firm began what was practically 
its first original enterprise in the educational field when it issued Whitney's 
German textbooks, starting with his German Reader, and following shortly 
with his Compendious German Grammar. In 1879, the American Science 
Series was begun with Packard's Zoology. The announcements included 
James' Psychology, Walker's Political Economy, and Martin's The Human 
Body. In the same year the first of Johnston's books, American Politics, 
appeared. These books represent the earlier development of Henry Holt 
& Company's educational business. 

GINN & COMPANY.— This house was founded in 1867 by Edwin 
Ginn. He began business at No. 3 Beacon Street, Boston, and soon ad- 
mitted as a partner Mr. Aaron Lovell, afterward the head of the house 
known as A. Lovell & Company of New York. Mr. Ginn's next partner 
was Mr. R. F. Leighton, the author of Leighton's Latin Lessons, then Mr. 

23 



Frederick Ginn, Edwin Ginn's brother. Later Mr. Daniel C. Heath and 
Mr. George A. Plimpton were admitted to the firm, Mr. Heath in 1876 
and Mr. Plimpton in 1880. The firm was then known as Ginn & Heath. 
In 1885 the partnership was dissolved, Mr. Heath retiring. The business 
was continued by Edwin Ginn, George A. Plimpton, and Frederick Ginn 
under the firm name of Ginn & Company. Since then there have been 
admitted at different times as members of the firm, Thomas Ballard, 
Justin H. Smith, Lewis Parkhurst, O. P. Conant, Ralph L. Hayes, Selim 
S. White, Thomas W. Gilson, Fred. M. Ambrose, Austin H. Kenerson, 
Henry R. Hilton, Richard S. Thomas, C. H. Thurber, T. B. Lawler, Dana 
W. Hall, Selden C. Smith, O. J. Laylander, F. C. Hodgdon, E. A. DeWitt, 
L. B. Robeson, Mark R. Jouett, Jr., J. W. Swartz, LeRoy J. Weed, Edward 
H. Kenerson, Norman C. Miller, and H. B. Conway. Of this number 
there are now eighteen surviving partners. 

Mr. Edwin Ginn died in 1914. Of the other partners who have been 
admitted, Mr. Conant, Mr. Gilson, Mr. White, and Mr. Kenerson, Sr., 
have crossed the Great Divide. Mr. Justin H. Smith retired from the 
firm to enter the faculty of Dartmouth College. Mr. Ballard, Mr. Hayes 
and Mr. Ambrose also retired. 

The first educational book that Mr. Ginn published was Craik's The 
English of Shakespeare. This was followed by Goodwin's Greek Gram- 
mar, the Allen & Greenough Latin Series, White's Greek Lessons, and a 
course of Grade School Music Readers by Luther Whiting Mason. This 
series was early introduced into the Boston schools and for some time 
was the standard series of school music in America. 

The Boston offices of Ginn & Company have been at Tremont Place, 
Beacon Street, in the old John Hancock house, and are now at 15 Ash- 
burton Place. 

The prototype of the Athenaeum Press was started by Ginn & G&Si- fK^ctfy 
p a wy in the early 80's. The building which now houses this establishment 
is located in Cambridge, and was erected in 1896. 

ALLYN & BACON.— Mr. John Allyn began business in 1868. He 
imported and published a line of books, chiefly Greek, but in 1886 he 
issued Pennell's Histories of Greece and Rome, Comstock's First Latin 
Book, and Kelsey's Caesar. In 1888 Dr. George A. Bacon joined Mr. 
Allyn in equal partnership. Dr. Bacon had been, before he entered 
business, the principal of the Syracuse High School. Shortly after the 
partnership was formed, the house purchased Walker's Physiology from 
A. Lovell & Company, but the book had already been in existence for some 
time. Both Mr. Allyn and Dr. Bacon are still living and carrying on 
their business. 



24 



THE CENTURY COMPANY.— This company was organized July 
21, 1870, by Roswell Smith and Josiah G. Holland. It is a corporation. 
Mr. Smith was the first president ; he was succeeded by Frank Scott, he 
by W. W. Ellsworth, and he by Dr. W. Morgan Shuster, who is at the 
present time in office. 

Strictly educational publications were first brought out in 1904, 
Fetter's Principles of Economics being the first volume to appear. Failor's 
Plane and Solid Geometry, Forman's Advanced Civics, Smith's Introduc- 
tion to Inorganic Chemistry, and Thorndike's Elements of Composition 
and Rhetoric were published shortly afterward. 

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY.— The founder of Funk & 
Wagnalls Company was Dr. Isaac KaufTman Funk, who established the 
business in 1876 with The Metropolitan Pulpit, now The Homiletic 
Review. Some months later he was joined by Adam W. Wagnalls, and 
the two entered into partnership, forming the business of I. K. Funk & 
Company. These two men were joined in 1879 by Mr. Robert J. Cuddihy. 

In 1891, Funk & Wagnalls Company was organized with Dr. Funk 
as President, Adam W. Wagnalls, Vice President, Robert J. Cuddihy, 
Treasurer and General Manager. William Neisel joined the staff of the 
publishing house in 1883, and was appointed head of the Manufacturing 
Department. In 1884, Dr. Funk founded The Voice and in 1890, The 
Literary Digest. Edward J. Wheeler joined the staff as editor of The 
Voice in 1884, and in 1895 became editor of The Literary Digest, which 
position he held until 1905, when William Seaver Woods became editor. 

The idea and plans of the Dictionary originated with Dr. Funk, 
whose first managing editor was Dr. Daniel Seeley Gregory. The Standard 
Dictionary was projected in 1890 and completed in 1893. Dr. Funk was 
editor-in-chief of all the publications of Funk & Wagnalls Company, and 
in his work on the Standard Dictionary was assisted by Dr. Rossiter 
Johnson, John Denison Champlin, Dr. Francis A. March, Sr., and Dr. 
Arthur E. Bostwick. The New Standard Dictionary was projected in 
1909, and was issued under the editor-in-chiefship of Dr. Funk, with 
Calvin Thomas as consulting editor, and Frank H. Vizetelly as managing 
editor, 1903-1913, editor of the same since 1914. The abridgments of 
the Standard Dictionary were produced under the general editorship of 
Dr. Funk, by Dr. James Champlin Fernald, Frank H. Vizetelly, and 
others. 

The office of Secretary has been held, sometimes in addition to 
other offices, by the following persons: Robert J. Cuddihy, 1891-1898; 
Henry L. Raymond, 1898-1904; Robert Scott, 1904-1913; Wilfred J. 
Funk, 1913-1915; and William Neisel, 1915 to the present time. 

Following the death of Dr. Isaac K. Funk in 1912, Dr. Adam W. 
Wagnalls was elected President of the Company; Benjamin Franklin 

25 



Funk, Vice President. On the death of Benjamin Franklin Funk in 1914, 
Wilfred J. Funk became Vice President and William Neisel, Secretary. 

The editorial policy of Funk & Wagnalls Company is directed by the 
Executive Committee, under the guidance of the General Manager, Robert 
J. Cuddihy. The Manager of the Educational Department is Mr. Wilfred 
J. Funk. 

Inclusive of the Dictionary and its abridgments, the first educational 
books published by the Company were Fernald's English Synonyms, 
Antonyms, and Prepositions and his Connectives of English Speech. 

Of the firm's publications circulated most widely in the schools, The 
Literary Digest takes first rank. It maintains an educational service among 
15,000 teachers and circulates in more than 10,000 schools. 

In 1904, Francis Whiting Halsey became literary adviser of the 
Company and editor of the book department of The Literary Digest. 
Under his supervision were produced : Great Epochs in American History, 
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, and with the assistance of William 
Jennings Bryan, World's Famous Orations, and in conjunction with 
Henry Cabot Lodge, Best of the World's Classics. Mr. Halsey died, 
November 24, 1919. 

The officers and the principal editors of the Company are : President, 
Dr. Adam W. Wagnalls; Vice President, Wilfred J. Funk; Treasurer 
and General Manager, Robert J. Cuddihy; Secretary, William Neisel; 
Homiletic Review, Editors: George Gilmore, Robert Scott; Literary 
Digest, Editor: William Seaver Woods; Standard Dictionary, Managing 
Editor, Frank H. Vizetelly. 

LYONS & CARNAHAN. This firm was organized and began 
publishing schoolbooks about 1878. In 1888, Mr. J. A. Lyons became 
associated with Mr. O. M. Powers in the publication of commercial texts. 
The firm name was Powers & Lyons. They continued to publish com- 
mercial books until 1909, when J. A. Lyons purchased the interest of 
O. M. Powers and continued to do business under the firm name of J. A. 
Lyons & Co. In 1912, J. W. Carnahan purchased an interest in the 
business, and the firm name was changed to Lyons & Carnahan. Mr. 
Lyons died in November, 1920, and Mr. Carnahan was elected Presi- 
dent of the new corporation which was organized under the same name 
of Lyons & Carnahan. 

Since 1912 the house has been engaged in the publication of both 
common and high school books. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY.— This firm was established 
about 1880 by Mr. H. O. Houghton and Mr. George H. Mifflin, with 
whom were associated Mr. M. M. Hurd and Mr. L. H. Valentine. They 
took over, either at that time or a little later, the business of various 
Boston publishers, namely, Ticknor & Fields, Hurd & Houghton, 

26 



Houghton, Osgood & Company; Fields, Osgood and Company, James R. 
Osgood & Company, and Ticknor & Company. Some of these firms were 
first merged together and then with Houghton Mifflin Company, but 
practically all this took place before 1882. Ticknor & Company, how- 
ever, became united with the business a little later. 

The Educational Department of Houghton Mifflin Company was 
established in 1882 through the efforts of Horace E. Scudder and Henry 
N. Wheeler, encouraged by Mr. Henry O. Houghton, Sr. There were 
then published Colburn's Arithmetic and certain Latin books, but Mr. 
Scudder had the idea that the great masterpieces of American literature, 
such as Evangeline, The Vision of Sir Launfal, Snow-Bound and other 
similar great classics which had recently come into the control of the firm, 
should be made available in cheap editions for school use. He became the 
general editor of the Riverside Literature Series which was then estab- 
lished, and which was pushed with vigor and energy by Henry N. Wheeler. 
Early in the 90's the Department developed with the publication of Fiske's 
History of the United States, Fiske's Civil Government, and various 
collections of literature such as Masterpieces of American Literature. 
This necessitated further expansion and an office was opened in Chicago 
under the management of C. F. Newkirk, who was later succeeded by 
W. E. Bloomfield. 

In 1902 J. D. Phillips, who had previously been connected with the 
Editorial Department of the house, was transferred to the Educational 
Department to do both agency and editorial work, and the Webster- 
Cooley Language Series was soon published. 

Mr. Scudder died in 1902 and Mr. Wheeler in 1905, and the Depart- 
ment came under the management of Mr. Phillips and Mr. Davol. 
Franklin S. Hoyt, formerly Assistant Superintendent of Schools in 
Indianapolis, was invited in 1906 to join the firm and take charge of 
the editorial end of the work. The organization then established has 
remained practically unchanged until now. Henry B. Dewey, former 
Commissioner of Education of the State of Washington, is now manager 
of the Boston office of this Company. 

B. F. JOHNSON PUBLISHING COMPANY.— This concern is 
the successor of B. F. Johnson & Company, which was organized some 
time in the 80's to develop a subscription book business founded by 
Benjamin Franklin Johnson in 1876. The business grew to enormous 
proportions and at one time the books published by this concern were to 
be found in almost every house in the South. 

In 1895, the Company began to experiment in a small way with 
schoolbooks, beginning with Lee's Advanced History. Two years later 
it published Johnson's Primer, and this was soon followed by Johnson's 
Readers. The success of these experiments led to a reorganization of 

27 



the Company by Mr. Johnson in 1900, when the subscription book business 
was dropped and the house began to devote itself exclusively to school- 
books. The first publications of the reorganized company were Graded 
Classics Readers and Colaw and Ellwood's Arithmetics in 1900, both of 
which series were remarkably successful. 

In 1902, Mr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by James D. 
Crump, who held the position until 1920, when he was succeeded by A. J. 
Gray, Jr. The Company has recently been reorganized by Mr. Gray to 
meet the demands of its extraordinary growth and to provide for further 
development on an enlarged scale. 

SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY.— This business was founded 
by Mr. Edgar O. Silver, April 21, 1885. On September 21, 1886, the 
firm of Silver, Rogers & Company was organized, M. Thacher Rogers 
being admitted to partnership. This partnership was succeeded by the 
partnership of Silver, Burdett & Company, April 16, 1888, consisting 
of Edgar O. Silver, Elmer E. Silver, Henry C. Deane, and Frank W. 
Burdett, and on May 2, 1892, the business of the partnership was assumed 
by the corporation of the same name. Mr. Edgar O. Silver died in 
November, 1909. In 1910, Arthur Lord was elected Acting President, 
and in 1914 Haviland Stevenson was made President of the Company. 

The date of the first publications of this house was 1885. Among its 
earliest books were the Normal Music Course and other music books for 
schools, Farley and Gunnison's Writing Books, Todd and Powell's Readers, 
Stowell's Physiologies, and Larkin Dunton's Geographical Readers. For 
two or three years after its organization in 1885, the house devoted itself 
almost entirely to the publication of music books for the common and 
high schools. In 1890, the policy of the house was changed and the list 
broadened to cover the other subjects in the school curriculum. 

Silver, Burdett & Company purchased the business of Potter & Putnam 
about 1903, and in 1904 that of the Morse Company, adding the lists 
of these houses to their own. 

D. C. HEATH & COMPANY.— This house was founded in 1886 
by Daniel C. Heath, whose first office was in Tremont Place, Boston. 
The name chosen by Mr. Heath for his firm was D. C. Heath & Company, 
which name has continued until this day. Mr. Heath's first partner was 
Charles H. Ames, who was admitted to the firm in 1888. His second 
was William E. Pulsifer, who joined the Company in 1889. Dr. Winfield 
S. Smyth, who had been Ginn & Company's Chicago manager, was taken 
into the firm of D. C. Heath & Company in 1893. In 1895, the partner- 
ship sold its business to a corporation organized in that month, of which 
Mr. D. C. Heath was made President, Dr. Winfield S. Smyth, Vice 
President, William E. Pulsifer, Treasurer, and Charles H. Ames, Secre- 
tary. Mr. Heath died in January, 1908, and Dr. Smyth in August, 1908. 

28 



After Mr. Heath's death his trustees, Herbert C. Foss and E. G. 
Cooley, who for some time had been Superintendent of Schools in 
Chicago, carried on the business for two years, when Mr. Heath's stock 
was purchased by William E. Pulsifer, Winfield S. Smyth, Jr., W. H. 
Ives, James C. Simpson, Isaac Van Houten, Frank F. Hummel, and 
others who bought a few shares of the common stock. In 1910 the 
corporation elected as its officers, William E. Pulsifer, President, W. H. 
Ives, Vice President, Winfield S. Smyth, Treasurer, and Charles H. Ames, 
Secretary. Mr. Ives soon retired and in September, 1911, Mr. Ames 
died. The present officers of the Company are William E. Pulsifer, 
President, James C. Simpson, Vice President, Winfield S. Smyth, Treas- 
urer, and Frank F. Hummel, Secretary. Mr. S. Willard Clary was the 
editor-in-chief of the Modern Language Department for twenty-seven 
years, and Dr. Charles Henry Douglas has been the editor-in-chief of 
the general list since 1895. 

When Mr. Heath retired from the firm of Ginn & Heath, he was 
paid for his interest partly in cash and partly in books. Among the 
publications which he received from the Ginn & Heath list were Remsen's 
Organic Chemistry, Shaler's First Book in Geology, Ybarra's Practical 
Method in Spanish, Sheldon's Short German Grammar, Hall's Methods 
of Teaching History, and Mitchell's Hebrew Lessons. There were 
altogether twenty-four bound books and several manuscripts, including 
those prepared by Mary Sheldon. Mr. Heath's first publications were 
Sheldon's Studies in General History, the Joynes-Meissner German Gram- 
mar, and several French and German texts purchased from English and 
Scotch publishers and republished by him. 

D. C. Heath & Company has acquired by purchase from Leach & 
Shewell and added to its list the Wells Series of Mathematics for second- 
ary schools and colleges, a number of Latin texts and textbooks from the 
University Publishing Company, Thomas's History of the United States 
from a Friends' Society known as The Text-Book Association of Phila- 
delphia, Bancroft's School Gymnastics from Kellogg & Company of New 
York, Bowser's Algebras, Geometries, and Trigonometries from Van 
Nostrand & Company, and the American rights in what is now known as 
the Arden Shakespeare from Blackie & Son, Limited, of Scotland. 

LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY.— The American house of 
Longmans, Green & Company was founded September 15, 1887, by Mr. 
C. J. Mills. Its business is incorporated under New York State law. 
The London house began business in 1724. The only change that has been 
made in the personnel of the Company on this side of the Atlantic was 
the admittance to the firm of Mr. Mill's son, E. S. Mills. 

The publication of schoolbooks by the American house was begun in 
1890. The first of these books were Epochs of American History, a series 
of three volumes edited by Professor A. B. Hart of Harvard. Woodrow 

29 



Wilson is the author of one of the volumes. This well-known series was 
quickly followed by Longmans' English Classics, Longmans' English 
Grammar, etc. 

SCOTT, FORESMAN & COMPANY.— This house was founded 
in 1889 under the firm name of Albert & Scott. The business was origi- 
nated and carried on for several years by Mr. E. H. Scott. In 1894, Mr. 
H. A. Foresman purchased an interest in the concern and shortly afterward 
the publishing business of George Sherwood & Company, with all its stock 
and publishing rights, was taken over. At that time the corporation name 
was changed to Scott, Foresman & Company. In 1896, W. C. Foresman 
bought an interest in the business and became Treasurer of the Company. 
The same year the publishing business of S. C. Griggs & Company was 
purchased, and all rights and stock were transferred to Scott, Foresman 
& Company. In 1908, R. C. McNamara became a stockholder and Secre- 
tary of the Company. In 1912, Charles E. Keck became a stockholder 
and manager of the Eastern office. 

Scott, Foresman & Company began publishing educational books in 
1889, the first being a beginner's Latin book, Bellum Helveticum, and the 
second, Lowe and Ewing's Caesar. 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY.— On June 14, 1890, an announce- 
ment was made by the American Book Company as follows: 

"American Book Company, Incorporated, New York, Cincinnati, 
Chicago. Birdseye Blakeman, President; Alfred C. Barnes, Vice Presi- 
dent; Harry T. Ambrose, Treasurer; Gilman H. Tucker, Secretary. 
Directors: Caleb S. Bragg, Chairman; William H. Appleton, William 
W. Appleton, Daniel Appleton, Alfred C. Barnes, Charles J. Barnes, 
Henry B. Barnes, Birdseye Blakeman, George R. Cathcart, A. H. Hinkle, 
David B. Ivison, Henry H. Vail. 

"The American Book Company is a stock company incorporated under 
state laws for the purpose of carrying on the manufacture and sale of 
books. The American Book Company has purchased the schoolbook 
publications hitherto issued by D. Appleton & Company, A. S. Barnes & 
Company, Harper & Brothers, Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Company of 
New York, and Van Antwerp, Bragg & Company of Cincinnati. The 
company is organized in the interest of economy in the production and 
sale of schoolbooks, etc." 

Mr. Birdseye Blakeman served as President from April, 1890, until 
May, 1893. He was succeeded by David B. Ivison, who served as President 
until 1896. Harry T. Ambrose was President of the Company from 1896 
until 1914, when L. M. Dillman was elected to that office. Mr. Blakeman 
died October 9, 1894, and Mr. Ivison, April 6, 1903. 

General A. C. Barnes served as Vice President from 1890 until his 

30 



death in 1904, when he was succeeded by Dr. Henry H. Vail. He in turn 
was succeeded by the present Vice President, A. Victor Barnes. 

Mr. Ambrose served as Treasurer of the Company until he was 
elected President in 1896, when Charles P. Batt, the present Treasurer, 
succeeded him. Gilman H. Tucker was Secretary of the Company at its 
organization in 1890, and remained as such until his death, November 14, 
1913. He -was succeeded by John Arthur Greene, who died in 1917. The 
present Secretary is W. L. Billmyer. 

Dr. Henry H. Vail was Chief of the Editorial Department at the 
organization of the Company, and held that position until his resignation 
in 1909, when he was succeeded by Russell Hinman. Mr. Hinman died 
in 1912, when Mr. G. W. Benton was made Editor-in-Chief and is still 
serving in that position. 

Since its organization, the American Book Company has taken over 
by purchase the schoolbook properties of the following houses : Werner 
School Book Company, Chicago ; Standard School Book Company, St. 
Louis ; D. D. Merrill, St. Paul ; Cowperthwait & Company, Philadelphia ; 
Taintor Brothers & Company, New York; E. H. Butler & Company, 
Philadelphia; Western School Book Company, Chicago; Sheldon & Com- 
pany, New York ; Williams & Rogers, Rochester ; the elementary list of 
the University Publishing Company, New York. 

SCHWARTZ, KIRWIN & FAUSS. This house was established 
in 1890, the founders being Alonzo Schwartz, James J. Kirwin, and Denis 
C. Fauss. In 1893, Mr. Schwartz retired on account of ill health, and the 
business continued under the direction of Mr. Kirwin and Mr. Fauss. 

In 1898, this firm purchased the business of the Catholic School Book 
Company, taking over its entire list. That company, in turn, was the 
successor of the Catholic Publication Society, established originally by the 
Paulist Fathers in 59th Street, New York, with Mr. Lawrence Kehoe as 
the manager. 

Among the earliest publications of the house were The Young 
Catholic's Illustrated Readers, Deharbe's Catechism, Gazeau's Histories, 
Edward's Hygiene, Hassard's Histories, Farrell's Spellers, and the Colum- 
bus Series of Readers, by Dr. William T. Vlymen, which series had 
already been contracted for and the first book published by the Catholic 
School Book Company, when Schwartz, Kirwin & Fauss purchased their 
list and completed the series. 

The offices of this firm are located at 42 Barclay Street, New York, 
with Mr. Kirwin and Mr. Fauss still in charge of the business. 

THE GREGG PUBLISHING COMPANY.— This organization is 
an outgrowth of Gregg Shorthand, first published by John R. Gregg in 
Boston, October, 1893. In 1896 Mr. Gregg moved to Chicago, where he 
established a school and continued to publish his system. In 1907, the 

31 



publishing business was incorporated as the Gregg Publishing Company, 
and is owned by Mr. Gregg, with the exception of the few shares held 
by others to comply with the legal requirements. In 1907 Mr. Gregg 
moved to New York, where he established an Eastern office. The San 
Francisco office was opened in 1912, the Boston office in 1919, and in 
1920 an office was established in London. At the present time the executive 
officers are: John R. Gregg, President; Mrs. J. R. Gregg, First Vice 
President ; Rupert P. SoRelle, Second Vice President ; W. F. Nenneman, 
Secretary-Treasurer ; Hubert A. Hagar, General Manager. 

Beginning with shorthand, an extensive line of publications in that 
subject was developed, to which were added textbooks in other commercial 
subjects. In addition to its two magazines, the list of publications of the 
Gregg Publishing Company at the present time comprises more than one 
hundred titles. 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.— In January, 1896, an American 
branch of the Oxford University Press opened offices at 91-93 Fifth 
Avenue, New York, under the management of John Armstrong, with 
whom were associated W. W. Mcintosh, W. F. Olver, and C. C. Schep- 
moes. In 1897, the Branch took over from The Macmillan Company 
the publications of The Clarendon Press. In 1915, Mr. Armstrong died. 
He was succeeded by W. W. Mcintosh, the present Vice President and 
General Manager. Mr. W. F. Olver, the first Treasurer of the Com- 
pany, died in 1919 and was succeeded by Isaac Brown. Mr. C. C» 
Schepmoes became Secretary at that time. 

The first schoolbook manufactured and published by the Oxford 
University Press in this country was Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, edited by 
Sphoenfeld, which was issued in 1902. The concern publishes the Oxford 
English, French, and German Series. In 1918, the Branch added a 
Medical Department, which handles all the medical publications of Henry 
Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton of London. 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.— Mr. George P. Brett, the 
present President, with the proprietors of Macmillan & Company, Ltd., 
London, the people who had been interested in the agency of Macmillan 
& Company previously operating in the United States, undertook the 
organization of the corporation, The Macmillan Company, in this country 
in. 1896. Mr. Brett has been the President of the American corporation 
since that date. 

There have been several heads of the Educational Department. It 
was organized first under the direction of Dr. F. L. Sevenoak, who gave 
a part of his time to this work, the balance being devoted to teaching. He 
was succeeded by James R. McDonald, who filled the position until the 
fall of 1902, when he was succeeded by William H. Ives. In 1906 Mr. 
Ives was succeeded by F. C. Tenney, who filled the position until July, 

32 



1912. At that time A. H. Nelson became the head of the Educational 
Department and held the position until July, 1920, when Charles H. 
Seaver, who now occupies it, succeeded Mr. Nelson. 

School textbooks were published in America by Macmillan & Com- 
pany before the time when The Macmillan Company was formed as an 
American corporation, the records showing the publication of Hall and 
Knight's Elementary Algebra and Algebra for Beginners in 1895, Tarr's 
Elements of Physical Geography in 1895, and Channing's Student's History 
of the United States in April, 1896. Immediately following the establish- 
ment of the American corporation, there was published Miller's Trigonom- 
etry in 1896, and in 1897 the following books appeared: Tarr's High 
School Geology, Nichols' High School Physics, Lewis's Writing English, 
Tarr's First Book in Physical Geography, McLellan and Ames' Arithmetic, 
Hall and Knight's Algebra for Colleges and Schools, Davenport's Elemen- 
tary Economics, Murche's Science Readers. The McLellan and Ames 
Arithmetic and the Murche Science Readers were the first textbooks 
published for elementary grades. The Macmillan Company first undertook 
the work of publishing books for that field in the fall of 1897. 

W. H. WHEELER & COMPANY.— This Chicago concern was 
organized in 1897 by Mr. W. H. Wheeler. In 1898 W. C. Fidler purchased 
an interest in the Company. Some years later, E. E. Wheeler, son of 
W. H. Wheeler, was admitted to the firm, as was also John H. Pugh. 
These four men are still active in the business. 

The first books published by this house were Wheeler's Graded 
Studies in English, First Lessons in Grammar and Composition. These 
were followed a little later by Wheeler's Graded Primer. 

NEWSON & COMPANY. — This concern was incorporated under 
the laws of the State of New York, July, 1900. Mr. Henry D. Newson 
was its first President. He was succeeded in that office by Mr. Everett 
Yeaw, the present President, in April, 1912. Mr. Newson severed all 
relations with the Company on January 1, 1920. 

Newson & Company immediately on its organization began the 
publication of educational books, the first of which was Buehler's Modern 
English Grammar, the original of the present Revised Edition, published 
in 1914. 

WORLD BOOK COMPANY.— The house was established in 1905 
by Casper W. Hodgson. "It was really founded," Mr. Hodgson writes, 
"in the Philippine Islands, a little farther west or east than any other 
American house has started." The first office was in Manila, but soon 
another was established at Park Hill, Yonkers, N. Y. 

The first books issued were six Philippine publications. The World 
Book Company now does a considerable business not only in the Philip- 

33 



pine Islands, but also in the United States and Latin America. O. S. 
Reimold and M. A. Pur cell have been connected with the business almost 
from its beginning. M. J. Hazelton, who joined the Company in 1908, 
has been the Philippine representative of the house. Professor John W. 
Ritchie has given his full time to the organization since 1915. 

The titles of the first educational books published for use in American 
schools are Ritchie's Human Physiology, and Wohlfarth-Rogers' New 
World Spellers. 

ROW, PETERSON & COMPANY.— This firm was organized in 
February, 1906. R. K. Row was made President and Isaac Peterson, 
Secretary-Treasurer. A few years later Charles D. Kennedy and J. R. 
Sparks purchased stock in the Company and were made directors, Mr. 
Kennedy becoming Secretary. In 1914, B. E. Richardson purchased 
stock and became Vice President. In 1919, Mr. Peterson died and Mr. 
Kennedy was made Secretary-Treasurer. 

The first books were published in the spring of 1906. These included 
Robbins and Row's Studies in English, Salisbury's The Theory of Teach- 
ing, Frazier's The National Speller, Hatch and Haselwood's Elementary 
Agriculture, and Hurty's Life with Health. 

McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY.— This organization was 
started on July 1, 1909, with John A. Hill, President, and James H. 
McGraw, Vice President. After Mr. Hill's death in 1916, Mr. McGraw 
succeeded him as President, which position he still holds. 

At the time of the formation of this Company in 1909, when the 
Book Departments of the McGraw Publishing Company and the Hill 
Publishing Company were consolidated, the combined lists totaled perhaps 
200 books. In ten years this list has grown to approximately 1000 titles. 
Some of the most notable publications of the Educational Department 
of the McGraw-Hill Book Company are Dr. Cady's Inorganic Chemistry, 
Dr. Norris' Principles of Organic Chemistry, Dr. Moore's History of 
Chemistry, Dr. Mahin's Quantitative Analysis, a. series of Electrical 
Engineering texts prepared under the general supervision of Dr. H. E. 
Clifford of Harvard University, a series of books on Scientific Management 
and Efficiency, under the general direction of Dr. R. S. Butler, formerly 
of the University of Wisconsin, a series of mathematical texts, including 
Slichter's Elementary Mathematical Analysis, Wolff's Calculus, Allen's 
Projective Geometry, and a series of successful books for trade schools 
and apprentice classes, under the general direction of F. E. Mathewson of 
the Dickinson High School, Jersey City, N. J. 

The present officers of the McGraw-Hill Book Company are: James 
H. McGraw, President ; Martin M. Foss, Vice President and General 
Manager ; Arthur J. Baldwin, Vice President ; Edward Caldwell, Treas- 
urer ; James S. Thompson, Secretary. 

34 



THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY.— This house was established 
in 1838 by Samuel Merrill. The business has continued in unbroken 
succession since that time, under several different firm names, being 
first Merrill & Company, then Merrill & Field, Merrill Hubbard Com- 
pany, Merrill Meigs & Company, The Bowen-Merrill Company, and in 
1903 the firm name became The Bobbs-Merrill Company. 

In 1909 a set of educational readers was added to the general line 
of publications of this house. As publishers of law books, The Bobbs- 
Merrill Company ranks among the leading houses of the country. 

The present officers of the corporation are : W. C. Bobbs, President ; 
John R. Carr, Vice President; D. L. Chambers, Secretary. 

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY.— The founder of this 
Philadelphia concern was Mr. John C. Winston, who was its directing 
head until May 6, 1920, when he died. 

The Company began work in the preparation of schoolbooks in 1913, 
but the business end of the Educational Department was not inaugurated 
until March, 1918. The first books published by this Company were the 
Winston Series of Readers, the Young American Readers, the Winston 
Simplified Dictionary, and two books on civics, Our Community and 
Our Neighborhood. 

IROQUOIS PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.— This Company 
was incorporated under the laws of the state of New York on July 15, 
1915, with E. F. Southworth as President and H. W. Duguid as Secre- 
tary. Mr. Southworth was for many years connected with Ginn & 
Company. 

During the first year the Company brought out a list of twelve books. 
This list increased until on February 1, 1921, it contained more than 
fifty titles. 

UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING COMPANY.— This firm was in- 
corporated in 1868 under New York State law. Prominent among the 
promoters and original stockholders of the Company were Horace Greeley, 
August Belmont, W. H. Aspinwall, G. B. Hallgarten, W. R. Travers, 
Eugene Kelly, J. B. Alexander, Richard L. Edwards, and many others 
of New York. In Baltimore, Robert Garrett & Sons, brokers controlling 
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, A. S. Able of the Baltimore Sun, C. H. 
Latrobe, at one time Mayor of Baltimore, John Hopkins, W. T. Walters, 
owner of the once famous Peach Blow Vase, were stockholders. Jeffer- 
son Davis and Joseph E. Johnson subscribed for stock, and Dr. Howard 
Crosby, the famous divine of New York, was an enthusiastic supporter. 
General John B. Gordon was interested in the Company and was for many 
years a director and Vice President of the concern. 

The educators agreed upon as authors of the new books were all uni- 
versity men, and this fact gave its name to the Company. The list of 

35 



authors included Dr. Basil L. Gildersleeve of Johns Hopkins University, 
Matthew F. Maury, author of The Physical Geography of the Sea, Dr. 
George F. Holmes, Charles S. Venable of the University of Virginia, and 
Professor William Hand Brown. Of the books published, Maury's 
Physical Geographies and Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar at once took 
their places as standard authorities. 

Early in 1873, Ezra D. Barker was elected General Manager by the 
directors. He supervised the revision of Holmes' Readers and Spellers, 
Maury's Primary and Grammar School Geographies, and Venable's 
Arithmetic. 

In 1888, Mr. C. L. Patton cast his fortune with the Company and 
came to New York as the Manager of the Agents' Introduction Depart- 
ment. In 1892, Mr. Patton reorganized the Company, which took over 
the plates and publishing rights of the J. B. Lippincott schoolbook list, 
also a list of books published by F. F. Hansell & Brother of New Orleans. 
, On the 31st of December, 1906, the directors of the Company decided 
to go into voluntary liquidation. In this liquidation the grammar school 
books were sold to the American Book Company, Gildersleeve's Latin 
Series to D. C. Heath & Company, Eadies' Physiologies to Charles 
Scribner's Sons, and the Standard Literature Series and all remaining 
publications to Newson & Company. 

ATKINSON, MENTZER & COMPANY.— This firm was organized 
in 1898 under the name of Hathaway & Atkinson. At the end of the 
year Mr. Hathaway withdrew and the firm's name became Atkinson & 
Mentzer. In 1899, the firm published its first book, namely, the Ivanhoe 
Historical Note Book. In 1904, Mr. Edwin Osgood Grover joined the 
organization and the firm name was changed to Atkinson, Mentzer & 
Grover. The first book published under this imprint was the Art Litera- 
ture Primer. In 1911 Mr. Grover severed his connection with the firm, 
which from that time on has done business under the name of Atkinson, 
Mentzer & Company. 



The writer regrets to state that he has not been able to get authentic 
data for historical accounts of the old firms of Brewer & Tileston and 
William Ware & Company of Boston, J. H. Butler & Company, E. H. 
Butler & Company, and Cowperthwait Company of Philadelphia, or 
Taintor Brothers of New York. There has not been included in this 
record several of the younger houses like the Southern Publishing Com- 
pany of Texas and the University Publishing Company of Nebraska. It 
is also a fact that there has been no attempt to secure the records of the 
old printing houses, which were not publishers as we understand the 
meaning of the term. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

019 878 067 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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Hollinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




019 878 067 4 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 






